Thoughts around Easter

With Easter coming up I am reminded that sometimes we don't relate the story of the cross to our own lives. Yes, we think about the death of Jesus and how He died but we forget to find ourselves in the story. There are so many lessons that we can learn other than the gift of salvation. Although that is the most important, without that the others mean nothing. So I looked at the story and studied it with the intention of finding something that I had never seen before. I had never done that with the story of the cross. For me it was life changing.

There was a verse that stuck out to me. It says that Jesus cried out with a loud voice. There are only two times in all the accounts of the cross that the Bible says that Jesus cried out. The first is the verse that caught my attention. Jesus cries out "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" He again cries out right before He dies. Now I understand why as He felt His life go out of Him He cried out. But it was a little harder to understand why He would cry out when He was forsaken by God. Now don't get me wrong, if I thought that God had forsaken me I would cry out, but I thought surely Jesus knew that this was a part of His death. He knew so many other details. He knew what had to happen. He knew the punishment that He would receive. He had spent enough time in the temple being taught as well as teaching the prophecies that He would have known what was to come. Not to mention the time He spent with His Father, God Himself.

That is when it hit me. Or I should say that God reminded me of something that had happened in my own life. My mother. I've struggled with her really knowing the Lord, and trusting in him. She was a wonderful woman, just not completely living her life for God. Our family had gone through quite a lot during my high school years. Losing a good friend in a car accident, and what came next, my parents going though the divorce process, losing my grandfather, and having my aunt, her sister, continue to struggle through brain cancer. I stopped going to church even for a little, because I was angry with God, I couldn't understand why all this was happening... and I just wanted to "fix it".

I then was put in a very awkward position when my parents had decided to separate. Where was I going to go? We would be selling the house. My father was going to be moving out, and I'd stay with my mother for a while. However at this stage of my life...she had developed a mental illness we were unaware of to its full extent at the time. She developed paranoia, due to medicine, and it's side effects for joint pain, and now has further developed to what I now would like to say is schizophrenia. However when one refuses to get help-I can't be certain-at least not yet. I pray that this will work out in a positive way, and can see the positives that have come from all this suffering, however it's been a rough road.

There were times where my mother thought myself or my father was stealing form her, or hiding something from her. She would say, and still says hurtful things with complete unawareness. Complete disregard for my feelings. And complete assurance that she is right. I can't be angry with her; she doesn't know what is going on. But it hurts. I try to reach her in multiple ways, but it is frustrating. Anyways, my point is, I know what if feels like to have a parent "reject" you. A parent that has all the love in the world for you. A parent who could not be more proud of her daughter. And I can understand why Jesus would cry out when God had to reject him. There was a feeling that the whole world had come to an end for me at age 17. My mother, always a perfect ray of sunshine, and model mother, until around age 16, went through a huge transformation, due to medicine that she had been taking through joint pain. Medicine-what was supposed to help JOINT pain... now had led to the brokenness of a family, and the mental illnesses of my mother. The grief of that moment still stays with me today. Every day, I pray that something will click with her. I'm currently trying to bring her closer to the Lord, in hopes that things will improve for her, not me. I've found my light. Yes, I've witnessed some awful things in my life...but I can say now that I have grown immensely, and in turn have become a person so full of love, and compassion, that I can look at the situation from a different perspective. I started volunteering for the mental health association, among others...because I can't imagine how many people are dealing with similar situations and situations far harder than mine. It took awhile for me to forgive my mother for the ways she acted, things she said, and also to forgive God. I was young, and angry, but forgiveness is an awesome thing. The feeling of that moment will never go away, but neither will the miles that I gained in my heart and soul.

Jesus knew that His Father would not be able to be with Him as He took the sins of the world upon Him. Can you imagine the pain of the moment? If a parent has ever rejected you then you can. I know that in a small way I can. I think that sometimes we forget that Jesus was not only talking to God but He was talking to His Father. He cried out because His parent had forsaken Him. It was as painful to Him as it was when He felt His life leaving Him. What I cannot imagine is knowing that it is coming and still going through it. If I am being totally honest I cannot say with certainty that if I had known what was going to come out of my Mother's mouth during the ending years of high school till now, that I would have stayed as long there and gone through it. And yet Jesus knowing what was coming went to the cross and suffered the rejection of His Father. And He did it for me. He did it because He loves me. Because He knew that it was the only way for us to be together someday.

The lesson of the forgiveness of my sins will always be the most important thing to me. But learning more about the sacrifice that Jesus made for me on that cross, coming to know more about the grief that He suffered makes me appreciate it all the more. How could I ever look at it the same again? Like I said, for me it was life changing!